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Preparedness Paradox

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Re: Preparedness Paradox

#81

Post by BurningFrog »

Trasmatta wrote: post #38

I’m having this struggle with projects at work. I’ve had to push back on all sorts of requests from our project manager and designer so that our team has the bandwidth to focus on some very important stability and security concerns for our next release. They want all sorts of additional fancy bells and whistles (that don’t add much user value or functionality) that we just can’t focus on right now, because it would c…

Ideally, the fact that you're working on internal maintenance shouldn't even be known to external customers.

My rule of thumb is that 1/3 of engineering time needs to be spent on maintenance.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#83

Post by pixl97 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #70
anonporridge wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why it's often good resource management to wait until something breaks before committing resources to fix it. Especially true in software systems. One might think that constant firefighting is a waste of resources, and we'd be better off solving problems before they happen. That's true if and only if you know for sure that the problem and eventual breakage is really going to happen AND that it's worth fixing.…

This is the no-brainer choice for anything that can be immediately replaced/ordered. Most of us aren’t keeping a stash of computer monitors in case of failure. On firefighting…huge swaths of burned down land can’t be reordered on Amazon and delivered next day. People quip “just replant the trees” but of course that doesn’t rebuild an ecosystem, we might not even replant the right trees, and the things that lived ther…

>This is the no-brainer choice for anything that can be immediately replaced/ordered.

Well, at least until C-19 hit then you realize that 'immediate replace/reorder' doesn't actually exist any longer, and now your forklift parts are actually going to take 2 months to show up on a delayed boat and nobody in the US has any replacements.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#84

Post by kcplate »

roflyear wrote: post #80
thedougd wrote: post #79

Glad the article mentions y2k. The massive hype and hysteria resulted in all the systems of significance being patched.

My dad uses y2k as an example for why climate change is overblown

Well, there was certainly a similar panicked “sky is falling and society will end as we know it” vibe back then with it with some people, not unlike some of the more rabid climate change activists rhetoric I have seen.

I’ll readily admit that I take some of the more dire climate change predictions with a grain of salt because of my Y2K experience. It was a damn nice time to make some money off the panic though.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#85

Post by pixl97 »

brewdad wrote: post #77
tunesmith wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that gets me closer to understanding it, thanks. If we consider an example where the potential outcome is truly unknowable. If we don't prepare, it might happen; if we do, it might not have ever happened. So in that sense, the Y2K bug isn't a good example, but perhaps preparing for catastrophic low-probability events like "AI paper-clip doom" is.

I saw this playing out in the California Super-storm stories that went out late last week. Some of the headlines made it sound like a mega storm that would bring 10 feet of rain was just off shore. Only reading the article led to to the possibility that such a storm could happen sometime in the next 50-500 years. No real indication of what anyone should DO with such information.

>No real indication of what anyone should DO with such information.

Do you build infrastructure? If no, the fact that 10 feet of rain can fall is mostly useless, unless you're buying a house downstream of a dam to keep in the family.

The situation is widely reported because it's a great fear based headline and gets the clicks. With that said, it's something every civil engineer that could build a project in CA should know about, because their decisions now could lead to the death of a very large number of people at some point in the future. That marginal wetland that could be reclaimed for housing shouldn't be, unless you like the news that comes out of Houston every once in a while.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#86

Post by pixl97 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #81
Trasmatta wrote: post #38

I’m having this struggle with projects at work. I’ve had to push back on all sorts of requests from our project manager and designer so that our team has the bandwidth to focus on some very important stability and security concerns for our next release. They want all sorts of additional fancy bells and whistles (that don’t add much user value or functionality) that we just can’t focus on right now, because it would c…

Ideally, the fact that you're working on internal maintenance shouldn't even be known to external customers. My rule of thumb is that 1/3 of engineering time needs to be spent on maintenance.

You should add an additional rule that another 1/3 of the time will need added on maintenance for the 1/3rd of the time spent on new features.

1/3 = adding new features.

1/3 = maintaining the security posture of the application and keeping it up to date.

1/3 = spent figuring out why the new features blew up in the field after passing all testing.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#87

Post by Aeolun »

kcplate wrote: post #84
roflyear wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad uses y2k as an example for why climate change is overblown

Well, there was certainly a similar panicked “sky is falling and society will end as we know it” vibe back then with it with some people, not unlike some of the more rabid climate change activists rhetoric I have seen. I’ll readily admit that I take some of the more dire climate change predictions with a grain of salt because of my Y2K experience. It was a damn nice time to make some money off the panic though.

It’s kinda hilarious in hindsight. Almost everything could still be done analog back in 2000. If we’d have the Y2K problem _now_ the sky might actually fall.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#89

Post by asdff »

huetius wrote: post #8

Not doubting this, but it seems to cut both ways. I can just as easily justify an overreaction by claiming to have averted some worse outcome. It seems to be a general problem of counterfactuals.

I think it would depend on the context which often depends on what the real risk is. Building 5000 nuclear missiles? Overreaction. Overbuilding flood control systems such that the region has not experienced major flooding in 100 years? Justified preparation. The tell for what is justified and what isn't is through what you can remove from the system and not see any ill effect, like a jenga tower. We've already decommissioned thousands of nukes and the sky didn't fall, so that goes to show all that preparation was useless. Take away flood control systems OTOH and that would probably result in thousands of lives lost before long given the odds of a bad storm in the area. Likewise with pandemic preparations (mentioned in the intro); what are the odds of a pandemic? High, so the preparations are justified.

Re: Preparedness Paradox

#90

Post by ithkuil »

bee_rider wrote: post #65
vapemaster wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i always heard it called the birthday problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem [weirdly, someone discovered an birthday overlap today at work and i just re-google/wiki'd this today]

Huh, what are the odds that the same mathematical concept will come up in conversation twice on one day? We have invented the Synchronicity paradox, er, problem.

Baader–Meinhof phenomenon or frequency illusion.

Sadly nobody called it baader-meinhof paradox.

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